Anatomy Of The Bustle

You know how they take pictures at weddings of the Bride getting dressed? Have you ever seen pictures of the Bustle getting done up after the wedding? (For men: "bustle" is the term for when you take all that material that drags on the ground behind the bride during the wedding ceremony and cleverly attach it to the dress so it doesn't drag anymore.) Yeah, well I don't think I have, and I'm pretty sure why: doing up the bustle is like planning a small military action. Let's take my sister's wedding dress as one small example. There was one button, one loop, six hooks, six eyes, and two snaps. Now, sure. Doing up one button, six hooks, and two snaps is a piece of cake*. But when they are cleverly hid over twelve yards of beaded and gemmed white shimmery material - with no diagram as to WHICH of the six hooks goes into WHICH of the six eyes - it becomes something of a Mensa puzzle.

Let me just add that the direction: "it's supposed to lay flat" when applied to a voluminous and complexly folded skirt doesn't really help and will, even if you're on the right track, cause you to unbutton, unhook, and unsnap several times to try other combinations of buttoning, hooking, and snapping to attain theoretical "flatness" which is both physically impossible and fundamentally unnecessary, as the folds looked damn fine.

* I forgot to tell you about the cake - it was done up in broken slabs of various shades of blue chocolate so the whole thing looked like it was covered with beautiful tile mosaic - SO AMAZING. Two different flavors, one was a strawberry shortcake kind of thing (there's a much cooler French word for it) and the other was chocolate layered cake... yum.